


Babel

by Etrangere



Category: Tokyo Babylon
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etrangere/pseuds/Etrangere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insomnia makes you do the wacky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Babel

**Author's Note:**

> Done for the silence challenge at togakushishrine. Much love to halcyon_libra for beta-ing !

> "It was about was the idea that when people stop talking they start communicating. That language can interfere with communication, because language limits. As soon as you say something you've eliminated every other possibility of what you might be talking about. We also use language to separate ourselves from other people, we also use language as white noise, we also misuse it horribly."   
> Joss Whedon, Hush DVD commentary

There were those hours when he walked the threshold between night and dawn. He was too weary to sleep anyway, too haunted to rest. Fleeing the unquiet bed, he paced the streets at random

The city that never slept - even now, when the earthquakes had driven away half of its population - was full of shout out, siren calls, flashing lights and the supple flesh of half-dressed youth. Everywhere, words called out, messages flashed for attention. A world of meaningless signs blinking like a blind eye.

As he did, the people in the street ignored that unending buzz. He passed groups of drunken men in suits, stumbling and incoherent voices raising to tell lewd jokes; bands of teenagers in their showy-colored clothes, extravagant haircuts, carrying with them pulsating music, and couples in their own bubble of silence, sleepily hunched against each others.

Tokyo - which Subaru loved still even when he couldn't drown in it anymore.

He was skimming the edge of sleep, his mind neither at peace nor aware. A strange state of doze he knew was dangerous - every boundaries were - yet strangely euphoric. Walking had its own rhythm, lulling, in this gray landscape of china ink barely brushed with watercolors. Sustaining enough for him.

He hadn't expected to see this face, this smile in the middle of this nebulous space, so stark and focused in his mental picture, and thus stood unprepared when Seishirou lit his cigarette in an obscene parody of reciprocity.

He had no guard, no ward put up against his own ache and wouldn't bear the though of more. He moved without thinking - only wanting - to stop the assassin from doing what he did best.

"Don't speak," He begged, one hand across Seishirou's mouth.

He felt the older man's head tilt, pondering, before curiosity won out and the lips set with assent.

Subaru closed his eyes not knowing where to go from there. He only was sure that he was right. Words lied. Words wronged. Words laid labels on people that pretended to describe reality and said nothing at all. Words put barriers in what was seamless and whole, and borders around infinity.

Words said this man was a killer, his enemy, his opposite and that he hated him. Words warned he had wounded him in the past and would do so in the future. Words broke down his heart into pieces laid for dissection - white - black - right - wrong - pain - pleasure - that didn't fit in any ways.

Maybe there were no words to explain what they were. No language to describe what he felt. But in the dim light blurring the setting he only sought respite.

So he let his hands talk for himself, exploring the periphery of Seishirou's face, brushing the texture of his hair, whispering speechlessly echoes of great truth.

Because every wall has a small hole via which lovers murmur.

A hand closed on a hand, and tongues were used for other things than for talking. They told much, too, of belonging and the wholeness of all things that oppose.

They were in Limbo, he thought, and it wouldn't last, but now and here, they could touch.

In a world without words, they made their own reality.


End file.
